♪ emily: she founded a genetic testing company on one big idea, to create a dna database that could move science forward. even help cure deadly diseases. in 2013, the fda yanked 23andme products the -- off the market, and anne wojcicki had to face a very public divorce from her husband, sergey brin. she has made a remarkable comeback with a first fda approved consumer product.

new funding, and a $1.1 billion valuation. joining me today is anne wojcicki. it's so great to have you here. the last two years have been crazy. it could have been disastrous for the company. now you are back on good terms. how do you feel right now? anne: i feel great. i am proud of the company and what we have accomplished. when you have to slog through and put your head down and there is a lot of work ahead of you and you're not going to see a reward for a couple of years, it's hard. i feel like we just climbed the first flight of stairs, but we're still climbing the empire state building. there is a lot more to go. we are back on the market. we have an incredible product. we have redesigned everything. this is the first chapter and a

whole new book for 23andme. emily: you have the first fda approved consumer genetic test. anne: consumers can buy things without having to go through a counselor or a physician. they can buy them directly from 23andme and get that information. emily: this tests for things like recessive genes. things you could pass on to your children. anne: there are things like your eye color. that teaches people about genetics and caffeine metabolism. that's really interesting. or lactose intolerance. emily: i would like for you to take me back to that day when you got that letter from the fda. anne: we were at an off-site planning for the future. we were all in great moods. just hired a great number of people.

a number of people started that week. what we learned after that moment is how much of a disconnect there was between what we thought we were trying to do and what the fda needed us to do. emily: did you think you could lose the company? anne: it took a while to understand. once, there's probably about a six-week time period where we talked to lawyers, the fda, and it became clear that there were not -- there was no easy option forward. emily: did you consider selling? anne: the idea that genetic testing will be a foundation for health care in the future was core to my being. i am wedded to this company for the rest of my life and i was not interested in selling. i was not interested in closing up shop and saying this is too hard. just a question that we need to refocus. we need to hire the right people.

we have a major miscommunication. we need to make sure we are executing the right way. emily: it was an arduous process. you hired people who could better interact with washington. how did you get there? anne: i got on the phone and calling everyone i knew and said , what are the right lawyers to talk to in d.c.? who are the heads of regulatory teams, helping to figure out the path forward? i lawyer had an excellent amount of experience with genomic health and understood that fda adds an element of structure to the company, so people could see the path we were taking. emily: there is so much more you want to accomplish. the test for breast cancer and alzheimer's, those have not been approved. what is the progress on those? anne: that is the top my priority list. customers really want those results. those are the things we are talking to the fda, what is the path going to look like to move

that forward. i don't have any updates. emily: you wanted to give customers information to their own data. and a mass so much data you could single-handedly move science forward. you have one million customers. is this the biggest dna database out there? anne: it's the biggest being used for research. what's exciting for me about what we were trying to do is the hypothesis that if we have the world's health care data and all this genetic information, everything about what you eat and exercise and your medical condition and what you respond to, we are going to understand patterns and understand the genetic basis of disease and understand the basis for why you might respond to a therapy or why you don't. i can imagine i walk into the , physician and they say based on the data you have given us, you are a couple of years away from being diabetic.

then if you want to make that -- that's need to do my hope. you can actually have so much data and understand your predisposed risks that you can make conscious choices about what you are doing on a daily basis to mitigate those risks. emily: he has been a critical part of your story. you guys are now officially divorced. you have two kids and two companies. how do you go through a process like that? ♪

emily: your dad is a physics professor and your mom was an educator. tell me about your upbringing. anne: it's interesting. i grew up next to people who did not do things for money. they did things because they loved it and things that they were interested in. the idea that you question all the time, that is core to me.

emily: your sisters are successful. how'd you all relate to each other? anne: we see each other a lot. nothing has changed. my sisters are still my sisters. when they come for dinner, they steal my clothes, especially my sister susan. we see each other at events all the time. it's fun. emily: was is it about your family that raised three very successful daughters in different disciplines? anne: we take feedback very well. there are few things people can -- there's very few things people could say to me that would truly insult me or i would take offense at. we became relatively confident in ourselves. none of us do things for the money. we do things that we are

passionate about. emily: you went to yale and majored in biology. you were also a competitive figure skater and hockey player? you went into health investing. anne: i got a job offer on wall street and i originally said no to the job. i called them back and said babysitting is not that interesting. maybe i should go to wall street. emily: how do you go from wall street to silicon valley? anne: i was understanding how the health system worked. the more i dug into it, the more i recognized how much it's a business. i went to one business in 2005. there were 1000 people working on how they could maximize the billing outcomes for the patients coming in to take on as

much money as possible. i realized the system is never , going to change. that was me throwing in the towel. as much as i'm investing and i believe there is such potential, the health care system i'm investing in is not the one that i want. theor me it was all about start of the movement where the consumers have a voice. emily: at a certain point you meant sergey brin. your sister, susan, rented her garage to him. anne: they started google in my sister's house. i could not avoid him because he was always there. we would be washing dishes and see them in the other room. they were just there. i used to hang out at google all the time. sister was there, and there was free food and it was fun. i got to know sergey. emily: but does not like? -- what was that like, being on the frontlines lines of the founding of google? anne: i think sergey and larry, they spent a lot of time together. the thing i was most inspired with was that they did not start

it because they wanted money. they had the dream of having a world of information on their laptop. at one point, they could have sold the company and been professors and that would have been good. but they did things their own way. i would complain to larry about the health care space and how much i felt like it was dysfunctional. he said you're either part of , the solution or part of the problem. that was very much them. fifth it is bad, then fix it. that sergeyearned was predisposed to parkinson's disease. that became a critical part of the story of 23andme and how you communicated what you were trying to achieve. anne: it came out just around the time that we were starting 23andme. i had talked to some external physicians and scientists about getting him tested. i was talked out of it. they told me, what would you do with the information?

even if you did have it, what would you do ? i found that really offensive. how dare you tell me what information is valuable for me. it was convenient that we had a spectacular science team. they put the mutations we were looking for on the chip. i was looking at the kitchen table. i called one of the scientists. his mom has two copies, is that what this means? they were surprised. they had not seen a lot of people that had two copies of that mutation and he had one. that catapulted us onto a new journey of being really involved with michael j fox and starting the 23andme parkinson's committee. emily: you have found new aspects of parkinson's. which could lead to a cure or help lead to a cure. anne: we made some headway on parkinson. we have somebody who leads the parkinson's team. we have a, some projects we are

talking about doing. understanding the genetic mutation that sergey has. we are talking about some of the things we will be able to do. emily: sergey has been a critical part of your story. and you guys are now officially divorced. you have two kids and two companies. when there is so much wealth involved, how do you go through this process? anne: it's complicated. that's all i can say. divorce is never easy. but we are very good friends. we see each other almost on a daily basis. we are supportive of each other. it's the new reality for the relationship. emily: do you have any advice from this time of your life? anne: you just have to accept that you do the best you can. my mom would call and say, it is 10:00 at night and my kids and i

are eating ice cream. they are not going to bed. we just needed the ice cream. there are moments when it's hard. you do the best that you can do. part of it is being gentle on yourself. you can't do everything. part of what i think we have done really well, you optimize finding the best in everyone and focus on the friendship. emily: you live in the silicon valley bubble. you seem so normal. how do you stay normal? anne: you stay focused on the things that are important. i volunteer at school. i make sure that the kids do their homework. i see my family all the time. i still see all of my friends. emily: you have this issue with women and technology. the lack thereof. how much progress have you seen and how much needs to be done? anne: there is an imbalance and it needs to change.

to me it is a 10 year issue. the other issues are getting ethnic diversity. you don't have to be the best at something in order to have an impact. everyone is really good at something. it's important that women know what kind of roles they can have. one of the parts of my job is not to be intimidated. i have sent, there are men and andn and then there are -- you try to work with the men and women. they can be people that you don't want to work with. try to find those people who are going to support you. emily: what do you think about the situation that is unfolding? ♪

emily: i do want to talk about your dealings with the fda. what do you think about elizabeth holmes? in the situation unfolding? anne: i have spent a lot of time with her.

i have a lot of respect or her mission in. -- for permission and what she is trying to do. but i have stayed out of knowing the details of it. i think health care is changing quite a bit. people are always going to be skeptical. the onus is on us to be very transparent. emily: i understand what she is trying to do. it is hard. but after 12 years, should it be -- evolved at this point? anne: i can walk into any center and i don't need a physician. i can just get my information. i think people just want to see and understand the technology and understand the data. people are making life-and-death calls based on this data. they want to understand the why. emily: this is a $10 billion company. people think it is a fraud. do you think it's a fraud? do you think it is possible,

what she's trying to do? anne: i'm sure it's possible. everything i know, she works incredibly hard. i have seen her discipline and how much she is working. i'm not close enough to the company to know about the technology. it's what everybody wants to know. everybody is excited about the potential and what that technology actually is. emily: how do you walk that line between your trade secrets and being transparent? anne: she is not required to have the transparency people are asking for. that's part of the disconnect. the fda has put out guidance, they are trying to regulate the industry. if that is the call they are making, it will be good to have that same transparency across all diagnostics. when you are in a crisis, it's hard to ever evaluate. you guys are all digging in. the truth comes out. when you are executing and you have more approvals, the things will speak to the reality. right now, there is a lot of discussion.

emily: let's talk about the future of 23andme. you now share data with pfizer. the goal is to incorporate all of the data into drug discovery. how is the drug invention program going? anne: i love it. i am excited about it. for people who have a disease, parkinson's is obviously one. multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue any of these autoimmune , diseases, if we can use this data to translate that into something meaningful, that's a reward for our customers. emily: i know you are doing a lot of work on lupus. anne: we are working on lupus with pfizer. we have a number of partnerships we are working on. lupus and inflammatory bowel disease and parkinson's, we are about to launch a few others. emily: are you going to do human

testing yourself here? anne: it will be asked best if we come to them with a target. or a compound with some clinical background. some data about how that's functioning. there is a higher likelihood of success if we can come with that level of information and move that forward. emily: you would do human testing here? anne: potentially we would do some of our clinical research. emily: there is ancestry, they do some similar things. do you see google and calico as competition? anne: everything here is based on engaging the consumer and making engaging products for them. calico is focused on anti-aging. i wish these companies well. i think it will expand the entire industry.

i want to translate this information into useful therapeutics. i want to come and say we , the simile hepatitis c was cured, i want to say we developed the cure for lupus. when i think about my success moment, it will be when we have that kind of cure that came because millions of people shared their data. and because of that we were able to create something. emily: any plans to go public? anne: i am not opposed to it at some point, it's a matter of finding the right time. we will definitely figure that out. emily: is there anything you would have done differently? when you are pioneering, you will always make mistakes. anne: we hired andy page. he is president, and we almost hired him five years earlier, and we should have. we would've been much better.

there's easier business models than what we have chosen to do. but we believe in what we are doing and it's going to have a massive impact on society. think back on when we started the company, we had the lone voice. it would echo. the fact that it's there, it's happening, and i see the world where like 1996 when the internet was just starting, this is virgin territory. it's all starting to sprout up. and i think there can be this consumer health care world that is just spectacular and creates something parallel to the existing world. it's complementary, but it reflects what we actually want for our health care. emily: thank you so much for joining me. anne: thanks to you.

♪ ♪

♪ emily: he is the owner of the world's very first model s, and an early backer of elon musk's tesla and spacex. a fast talker with an unconventional investing philosophy who once shadowed steve jobs. he has amassed one of the biggest private space collections in the world, and has spent his days pondering the future of artificial intelligence, genomics, and self-driving cars. joining me today on "studio 1.0," steve jurvetson. steve, thank you for being here. it is great to have you. steve: thank you. emily: i want to start in 1996. steve: oh, dear.